Presenter: Michael Vincent Miller

Description:

There are difficult – and inevitable – stretches that one will encounter in any lasting intimate relationship. They tell us that loving will always at some point involve dealing with loss. How to face and contend with these darker stretches that come up in intimacy is one of the greatest dilemmas in the life of couples. It always shows up in couples therapy and in much of individual therapy as well. The prospect of loss plays a major role in the anxieties that accompany virtually all our loving. It can lead, for example, to fear of commitment, to one or both partners absenting themselves psychologically even while staying in the relationship, or to one or both partners trying to gain control of the other and the relationship.

Gestalt therapy challenges us to embrace what exists, even the more difficult and disturbing elements of our lives. The optimism inherent in Gestalt therapy resides in its belief in the powers of transformation. In this presentation, we will explore the possibilities through which the unpleasant experiences of disappointment in love, as well as sorrow and grief, although never to be enjoyed, can be reshaped and reframed into extraordinary opportunities for self-transformation and growth.

Biography:

Michael Vincent Miller, PhD, has practiced and taught Gestalt therapy for over 40 years, primarily in New York City. He was trained in Gestalt therapy by its original founders. He has also been on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, during which time he held the Stegner Fellowship in Poetry. He also received an award from the Academy of American Poets for one of his published poems. He was a co-founder of the Boston Gestalt Institute. He is a former president and currently a fellow of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. Michael is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and introductions to books, and his own book Intimate Terrorism (W.W. Norton) has appeared throughout the world in nine languages. He is also the author of Teaching a Paranoid to Flirt: The Poetics of Gestalt Therapy (The Gestalt Journal Press), a collection of essays, and, most recently, Paths of Curiosity (l’Exprimerie, France).